WaPo: Has anyone been able to sign up for ObamaCare through the federal exchange yet?

posted at 4:01 pm on October 3, 2013 by Allahpundit

Ed mentioned this piece in an earlier post but I feel obliged to give it an extra nudge. There are glitches, there are serious glitches, and then there’s number-one ObamaCare fan Ezra Klein running pieces on his WaPo blog wondering if a single human being has yet managed to enroll in O-Care via the Healthcare.gov website. And as icing on the cake, the post is punctuated with an image of … a unicorn.

The federal government has said that somewhere out in this vast country of 313 million people, where 48 million lack insurance coverage, someone has managed to sign up for health insurance on the federally-run marketplaces. As of yet, we haven’t tracked this person – or these people – down…

There are certainly lots of people trying to buy health insurance on the marketplace, that much is clear from my inbox. “I am trying to sign my wife up for an individual policy on Healthcare.gov and it’s still basically impossible,” one reader in Florida wrote to me Thursday morning. “I tried to create the account again and was told my username already existed for another account. I then closed the web browser and started looking around for a drink (if it weren’t 8:30 a.m…).”…

But the federal marketplace is a bit of a black box right now. There’s been heavy traffic, with over 4.7 million visitors since the exchanges opened for enrollment on Tuesday. The White House says some applicants have signed up, but didn’t say how many. Rumors in the insurance industry hover in the single digits; several health plans say they are unaware of anyone signing up for their plan. BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina says it has enrolled one person.

The good news? Since WaPo posted that this morning, they found someone who enrolled successfully on the federal exchange. His name’s Chad Henderson. It took him three hours and his plan cost him “a little more than I was expecting.” (Some enrollees on the state exchanges are finding the same thing.) And he’s now apparently spending most of his waking hours taking calls from reporters since he’s the only person they can find — in America — who can report a somewhat useful experience on the Healthcare.gov site. Obama tried to explain that away yesterday by claiming that the demand over the first two days has far exceeded expectations; in that case, how low were their expectations that they weren’t prepared for several million curiosity seekers on launch day of the most momentous social program in decades? Haven’t there been a few presidential speeches and a few thousand news stories over the past several weeks reminding people that October 1 was the big day? Did they … not understand that there might be a heavy load on government servers as a result?

Philip Klein tried setting up an account on Healthcare.gov this morning and had to eat an even tastier shinola sandwich than he did on Tuesday.

My Thursday morning attempt to login to the main Healthcare.gov hub that’s supposed to serve residents of 36 states, was greeted with a 404 error: “The requested URL /serverdown.html was not found.”…

Roughly 40 percent of enrollees in the exchanges will need to be young and healthy so that they can offset the cost of covering sicker patients and those with pre-existing conditions. Those with extremely high medical expenses are the most likely to endure whatever technical hurdles arise and keep trying until they’re able to successfully enroll. But those who are more ambivalent — the young and healthy with low medical expenses — could get discouraged. That would have disastrous consequences for the law.

For all of the outreach efforts by the administration and outside groups, word of mouth is likely to be the most powerful factor influencing people’s decisions about accessing the exchanges. The administration wants to get to the point where, if a bunch of friends in their 20s are talking about health insurance, one will say, “Oh, I went on that new Obamacare exchange and it was really easy and I was able to get affordable insurance, I’ll send you the link.” But instead, if too many people say, “I tried to buy insurance but the website was barely functional, and when I finally searched the plans they were more expensive than I thought,” it’s really going to dampen enrollment.

And that, of course, explains why even Ezra Klein’s site is mocking the White House for its incompetence. The more bad press HHS gets about the website from the media, including friendly media — especially friendly media — the more urgently they’ll try to fix it. Embarrassing coverage could be useful to ObamaCare fans, frankly, in fanning the fire that’s been lit under the White House’s ass. Although, honestly, even if the site was glitchy for a month, I think O and his big-data brain trust would find ways to put the word out comprehensively once it’s fixed. They’ve got a gigantic mailing list and experts in social media on staff; reaching “young invincibles” to let them know that Healthcare.gov is no longer as unstable as Geocities circa 1995 can’t be that difficult for them, especially given the stakes.

Via CNN, here’s Sanjay Gupta reporting yesterday on his experience with Kentucky’s state-run health exchange website, which did somehow manage to enroll a few thousand people — and, apparently, frustrated many, many more. Gupta says he spoke to roughly 100 people to see how things went for them when they tried to sign up. Results: 0 for 100. Exit question: Could free smartphones be the answer?

Blowback

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I was curious and made an honest attempt. One page would send me back to the beginning. Rinse and repeat.

gatorboy on October 3, 2013 at 4:14 PM

I have tried for 3 days….different browsers and computers – no cigar.
I just want to find out how much this goddamned ObamaCare is going to rape me for.
I have called 3 insurance agents, they keep telling me to go to healthcare.gov first….

Well, I haven’t successfully made it through the application yet. But I am getting closer. I have a feeling that if I have all the proper information together, I may get there tomorrow. So far, 3 days and counting and about 2 1/2 hours spent on this.

Now, I don’t plan on buying anything, because I expect it to be way out of my price range, but I’m interested in seeing how much it will be.

Obama tried to explain that away yesterday by claiming that the demand over the first two days has far exceeded expectations…

Which is absolute nonsense. In order for this to work probably over 400k people a day need to sign up between now and the end of March. If we’re going to take Obama at his word that means they were expecting this to be a total failure.

“It was a little more than I was expecting,” he says. “I like the doctor benefits, but I would have really liked a plan that includes dental and vision, since I have contacts. That kind of stuff I would have preferred.”

Those have always been separate plans, Chad. Obamacare is about health insurance, not dental and vision.

This is the guy they put forward (and that’s what they did) to say the exchange was a-ok? He “wants it to succeed”, so he’s going to downplay (and spun like a top to do it) all the bad things. Yet he couldn’t deny reality, and the WaPo was gritting it’s teeth the whole article.

My Thursday morning attempt to login to the main Healthcare.gov hub that’s supposed to serve residents of 36 states, was greeted with a 404 error: “The requested URL /serverdown.html was not found.”…

For the less technically inclined, a 404 error is Web site code saying that a page could not be found. Note the page address it was trying, and unable, to find… serverdown.html.

So not only did they fail at creating a Web site that could serve its customers after three years of development, but they managed to build a site that failed so epically that it couldn’t manage to load the page that tells you it’s failed…

The administration wants to get to the point where, if a bunch of friends in their 20s are talking about health insurance, one will say, “Oh, I went on that new Obamacare exchange and it was really easy and I was able to get affordable insurance, I’ll send you the link.”

…because 20-somethings actually talk/think that way? More likely:

“Uh huh, you know I was like all on that new Obamacare thing, ya know, and it was like really easy so I was like, whatever, and like I was like so able to get affordable, like, what-do-you-call-it, I’ll send you the link. Oh, cute shoes!”

I think O and his big-data brain trust would find ways to put the word out comprehensively once it’s fixed. They’ve got a gigantic mailing list and experts in social media on staff; reaching “young invincibles” to let them know that Healthcare.gov is no longer as unstable as Geocities circa 1995 can’t be that difficult for them, especially given the stakes.

Maybe, but more likely not, in view of the fact that their $1 billion national ad campaign has failed to either inform or persuade them.

A blogger posted yesterday that she was successful in signing up. Her numbers are unbelievable. Here are her claims:

My $811 monthly premiums would be reduced to $85 per month
My $2400 annual medical deductible would be reduced to $500
My current maximum out-of-pocket expenses are determined by a complicated multitude of factors and would be reduced from a minimum of $4800 per year to $2250 per year
My regular primary care physician visits are going to be reduced from $150 to $15
My lab work, x-rays, mammograms, etc. will be reduced to a maximum of $15 each–many preventative visits are INCLUDED in the monthly premiums!

Comments at the site however indicate that others are getting rate quotes that are double their existing premiums and for diminished benefits.

I can’t get through to healthcare.gov, but I check the prices for individual policies directly through Coventry and BCBS in my state. As of 1/1/2014 we will be trading our $3100/mo family policy for 3 individual policies, same coverage as now, for $1100. The over 50 crowd will probably be the only ones who will benefit from Obamacare.

Unless I am living under a rock, I haven’t heard of one single success story of anyone having been signed up online with Obamacare since the official start yesterday. Not one. You would think the MSM would be touting individual success stories, or at least one success story, but there is nothing online about anyone successfully signing uo, i.e. getting all the way through the process.

Isn’t that a pretty glaring omission in all the hoopla? Is this a side benefit of the government shutdown? How come no one is calling any attention to this besides me?

Senate Democrats blocked four resolutions to fund government programs, including paying the National Guard and opening national parks, as Republicans offered the limited measures in an attempt to win the government shutdown fight by financing popular programs and leaving those they oppose untouched.

“Unbelievably, today Senate Democrats went on record to oppose funding for National Guard and Reserve salaries, veterans’ services, lifesaving medicine and cures, and national parks and museums,” Senate Republican Conference chairman John Thune, R-S.D., said in a release following the procedural battle.

“Congress unanimously passed a bill to ensure active-duty military personnel are paid during this lapse in government funding, and it’s unclear why Senate Democrats wouldn’t pass similar measures to fund these important services,” Thune said.

To understand the challenge, I spoke with Aaron Karjala, CIO of Cover Oregon, which runs Oregon’s health insurance marketplace, and Carolyn Lawson, CIO of Oregon Health Authority and Department of Human Services, which started the exchange project before state lawmakers created Cover Oregon….

About 1,700 individual rules affect eligibility for health insurance subsidies in Oregon. Children might qualify under different rules from their parents, or half-siblings might have different eligibility based on their parents’ income. In Oregon, writing the eligibility rules engine took 12 people nine months. Confirming eligibility requires integration with multiple outside data sources, such as confirming income and citizenship with federal sources, and that process is what separates it from ecommerce sites.

I can totally understand how several million people in one day can crash a webserver. After all it takes a big company like YouTube to have 1 million unique views in a month. …. …. What’s that, oh, one billion …. Nevermind. Emily Litella. Web Maven

From what I can tell you can be low income, not qualify for Medicaid and get subsidies and you only have to pay a couple of dollars for monthly premiums. The problem is that you still have thousands of dollars in a deductible to meet and high copayments.

From what I can tell you can be low income, not qualify for Medicaid and get subsidies and you only have to pay a couple of dollars for monthly premiums. The problem is that you still have thousands of dollars in a deductible to meet and high copayments.

Blake on October 3, 2013 at 5:22 PM

Yes, it might be better for some of our ‘working poor’ to lower their income to the point where they can stay or get into Medicaid. Hard to say the extent of the problem because Medicaid rules vary from state to state.

Glitches? How can any sane person describe these as glitches? It’s an epic fail. What have they been doing for three years? Programmers can put a site like that together in a matter of months, with all the bells and whistles, and they would have tested it out over and over and not launched it until all the glitches were fixed. There’s no excuse for people who probably make 6 figures a year to throw this out there when it obviously doesn’t work. What a farce.

And not the least bit surprising. People should be glad they weren’t able to sign on to this program. Can you imagine trying to get a coverage issue resolved once you’re covered when they can’t even figure out how to sign people up?

But noooooo, the Republicans are evil by trying to delay what obviously is not ready for prime time. Idiots.

Imagine if you were in the private sector, told your boss healthcare.gov was ready to launch, and then customer complaints started rolling in and the media was showing how they themselves weren’t able to use it. Would you still have a job? In DC you’d get a promotion.

We should keep this guy’s name in mind. Why do I say that? For two reasons. To see if his identity has been stolen and how many times (in different states) this guy will vote. The new media is worrying about identity theft and wiping out a person’s savings (which is cause for concern), but voter fraud could become rampant.

BTW, they somehow managed to make the 1-800-F1CKYO number even less useless than the website. They took my info (fake, of course) and then told me to get on the website. I asked for pricing info over the phone, and she told me she couldn’t do that. I had to go on the website. So, the phone call was like the signup process on the website without the option to actually sign up.

I can’t get through to healthcare.gov, but I check the prices for individual policies directly through Coventry and BCBS in my state. As of 1/1/2014 we will be trading our $3100/mo family policy for 3 individual policies, same coverage as now, for $1100. The over 50 crowd will probably be the only ones who will benefit from Obamacare.

bopbottle on October 3, 2013 at 5:05 PM

$3100/mo * 12 = $37200 a year.

Our entire family never consumed that much medical care in any year, and there were 7 of us when the kids were all home.

Roughly 40 percent of enrollees in the exchanges will need to be young and healthy so that they can offset the cost of covering sicker patients and those with pre-existing conditions.

There is no way in the world that they will get 40 percent of the enrolees to be young, healthy people. They don’t have the money, they don’t have the jobs and they can figure out that it is a horrible deal for them.